Despite all the buzz about software-defined networking (SDN), many organizations don’t yet have a clear idea of how it will benefit them. In this blog, I’ll tackle the what and why of SDN, and explain the different approaches you can consider.

What: A Disruptive Approach to Network Control

For the last quarter century, network devices have performed two types of processing:

The data plane looks at a routing table to decide where to forward packets. This processing takes place in dedicated hardware ASICs.

The control plane takes care of everything else, such as spanning tree, AAA, exporting NetFlow statistics, SNMP, and more. The control plane is implemented in software, and you can think of it as the brains of the network element.

So, if your network includes 200, 2000, or 20,000 network devices, that means you’re managing 200, 2000, or 20,000 control planes and keeping all of them up to date. Read More »

We’re officially in the middle of summer and at Cisco IT that means we’re knee deep in our summer internship program.

Working with the summer interns is one of the best parts of my job. I absolutely love our interns’ unbridled energy and enthusiasm. They are refreshing in their honesty and bring new ideas and new ways of looking at things, viewing work through a different lens. Read More »

In my job as Program Manager for the Cisco IT Advanced Cisco Experience (ACE) Program, I need to meet regularly with my team members, leaders of the user communities we serve, and other colleagues who are all over the world.

Sure, I could handle some of these interactions with an audio-only phone call, but I’d miss the face-to-face interaction and I don’t have time to travel to meet each team in person. But today I conduct many of these small group meetings and individual conversations as HD-quality video calls over the personal Cisco TelePresence EX90 endpoint that’s on my desk, using the ACE network video services. Read More »

What does it actually take to enable the 89 percent of Cisco employees who do at least some of their work remotely? For Cisco IT, this challenge means supporting products and services on both sides of the connection: in the teleworker’s home (and on their mobile devices) and in the Cisco corporate network.

Cisco Teleworkers Solutions in Employee Homes

We currently support three solutions to meet the teleworking needs of our mobile and remote employees:

Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client: Installed on the employee’s laptop or mobile device, this software client provides a secure VPN connection to the Cisco network. It is available to any Cisco employee and we currently support 30,000 users.

Cisco OfficeExtend: This solution includes a wireless access point that secures connectivity for the employee’s laptop and Cisco Unified IP Phone 9971 over a home network while reducing congestion, wireless interference, and security risks from other devices. We use this solution primarily for contact center agents, contractors, and employees who don’t require the HD-quality video of Cisco TelePresence for their work.

Cisco Virtual Office: This solution uses a Cisco 881 Integrated Services Router in the home to connect an employee’s laptop and Cisco Unified IP Phone 9971 to the Cisco network over an encrypted VPN. It also delivers HD video for the Cisco Jabber Video for TelePresence client or a separate Cisco EX 90 personal video endpoint. Cisco Virtual Office is used by employees who telework extensively and we currently support over 26,000 users.

The diagram below shows how these solutions connect to the Cisco network via the employee’s residential broadband Internet access service.

Recently I was asked by DeVry University, one of our Cisco customers, to participate in a video interview on the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) careers for women. It gave me a reason to pause and reflect on my own career journey, what prompted my start in business and how that journey has evolved. Read More »

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